Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Pop quiz - what do you do....?

I would like to bring up what to me seems like a yoga dilemma... perhaps because I'm still a yoga rookie...

Ahimsa, one of the Yama's, tells us to have compassion for all living things. To me, this sounds like do no harm to other living creatures so if your actions cause harm to other... not doing a good job at ahimsa.

But, I consider myself also as a living thing.... so I should not harm myself either, right?

So here's the pop quiz question (sorry for stealing your line Keanu Reeves)...

Pop quiz - your point of view in a certain situation, is hurting another person. But letting go of your point of view and adapting the other person's point of view, is hurting you - what do you do?

Do you have to give in (and probably by calling it like that, it already sounds very un-yogi) and look for a yogi way to accept the other person's point of view? Sounds a lot easier than it is - how much can a person "give in", or go against what feels natural, before you actually are no longer yourself? Or is it all part of an evolution that you should go through when deep diving into yoga? What if you are actually happy with who you are, and you don't want to adopt an other view or evolve into a different person - is that haughty or are you then just not getting the point of yoga.

Maybe I should have stuck to being a Western yogi and stuck to the asana's and let the rest of the yoga limbs be... but somehow, the other limbs are fascinating and trigger me to think and question a lot of things....